


The Well-Being of a Rat

by BenevolentErrancy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Pets, Rats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 20:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11066817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenevolentErrancy/pseuds/BenevolentErrancy
Summary: Rats are big, mean, vicious creatures. Destructive, diseased, and constantly hungry. For all they were ugly pest, anyone with sense in the Outback maintained a healthy fear of them - there was a reason Junkrat had chosen them as his namesake.He had no idea that once you left Oz rats became palm-sized balls of fur and whiskers.





	The Well-Being of a Rat

**Author's Note:**

> A morning drabble for the [kmeme](http://overwatch-kink.dreamwidth.org/679.html?thread=1120167#cmt1120167) because rats are cute and Junkrat's cute and they should get to be cute together

Hana's foot hovered midair. On the screen of her little hand-held game her character died and an accusatory _GAME OVER_ flashed at her. She couldn't pay it too much attention though, on account of her own life having flashed before her eyes not a second ago.

Or, well, _a_ life. Quite possibly Junkrat's, because she was going to kill him.

Very carefully she took a step back, away from the giant, evil-toothed trap that was lying open and taunt on the ground. It had been set up two steps in from the doorway, just waiting to mutilate the next person to step in the room who wasn't paying attention, like someone who was going over reports, or talking with someone, or, say, just for example, someone in the middle of a boss fight she'd been working on for the past three days.

For example.

At least if nothing else, being a pilot in MEKA meant being a very good multitasker and she'd noticed the wicked glint out of the corner of her eye before disaster could fall. As it happened, being a pilot in MEKA also meant being trained to be a very effective killer – mostly of omnics, but hey, humans were just softer, squisher, less gun-covered omnics, right? It could be that hard.

“ _JUNKRAT!_ ” she shouted.

There was the sound of a _snap_ , a clang, a shriek, and then Junkrat's very frazzled head popped up from, of all places, behind the couch.

“Don'cha know not to go around scaring a man half to death when he's _workin'_?” demanded Junkrat, but he was grinning so Hana could only assume that the trap he was presumably setting behind the couch hadn't snapped shut on anything fleshy.

“What is _that_?” she demanded, gesturing at it with her foot. (She had considered nudging it, but had then remembered all the random, unexpected explosions that came from Junkrat's workspaces and wisely held back.)

Junkrat glance at it, then at her, and then at it again, before settling on giving her a calculating look that seemed to be deciding if she was daft or having him on.

“S'a trap, what's it look like?” he replied. Then grinned. “One o' me best. Don't whip those babies out for just anyone, y'know, a feather could set 'em off and they gotta bite better'n a croc. You're welcome.”

“ _Your wel_ – Junkrat! You can't just... Why is... I could've lost a foot!” Is this what Captain Amari felt like, when she claimed it organizing them felt like she was herding children? Hana had always assumed she'd just been saying that to frustrate Fareeha, but maybe Hana was beginning to see her point. At least most kid's lego could permanently maim a person. Well, probably not.

“What? How?” argued Junkrat, who was now clambering over the couch. “It's not even hidden! How thick would you have to be to step on that?”

Hana flushed. “I wasn't looking for traps! We're on the base! No one thinks to look for traps _set by their allies on their own_ base! You don't get random battles in the hub!”

“Ha! That sounds like a damn good way to get offed.”

Hana stared helplessly at Junkrat, who just seemed self-satisfied with the perceived foolishness of his teammates not being constantly and permanently paranoid of attack. By and large, she actually quite liked Junkrat. When he could be coaxed down from his destructive high, he was surprisingly good company – good-natured and excited and funny. But then there were times like this, when she felt that Australia must not just be on the other side of the world, but in a different galaxy all together. Or maybe a different dimension, the sort you got pixelated hell-beasts crawling out from.

She decided to keep her line of inquiry simple. “ _Why?_ ”

“Heard ya got rats,” said Junkrat. “Seems a little shonky for a posh set up like this, but I guess nowhere's perfect, eh?” Suddenly, Junkrat was shifting from foot to foot, fidgeting even more than usual; one hand scratched at the back of his neck as he admitted, a little gruffly, as if reluctant to do so, “And, I mean, you cobbers have been doin' me a good turn. I mean, gettin' paid for a good day's work is one thing, but all the food an' shit, and your winged shiela with her notepads and gizmos sorting out me radiation... it's aces. So. Figured, it's just fair, yeah?” He gave himself a full body shake, as if trying to get rid of the unpleasant feeling of showing gratitude. “ _And I mean_ if anyone knows rats, it's the 'Rat, roight? So, I got this, mate, no worries.”

Hana was... strangely touched. But that really only began to scratch the surface of everything that was currently happening. Really, the most important thing was to just get Junkrat to dismantle the traps before someone got hurt but, well, Junkrat had a way of being so much of a mess so much of the time, that you found your curiosity getting piqued whether you wanted it to or not. You couldn't just cut to the chase with Junkrat, because it felt like there was _no way_ what was currently happening could actually be currently happening, and you just _needed_ to question it. As if picking at it could somehow force it to make more sense. Experience by now had taught them all that, where Junkrat was concerned, sense was usually somewhere far off in the distance, but still, Hana couldn't resist. She had never been one to pass up a side quest.

“How are you going to catch a rat in something like that anyway?” she demanded, gesturing to the massive trap. Even if a rat did somehow climb onto the trigger, it was obvious to anyone with eyes that the teeth would snap shut way above its tiny head. “It looks like it was designed to kill bears!”

“Nah mate, bears are way easier to catch. Just gotta offer t'buy 'em a drink!” he said, and cackled. “'Sides, once those ratty bastards smell the meat they'll be flocking in no time. Though... huh. Guess I've never seen rats round here before. Lots more food, maybe they ain't so desperate as back home... hmm.”

“Meat,” was all Hana could say, a little weakly. Up until now, she hadn't really been able to look much further than the wicked teeth of the trap, but on closer inspection she realized there was something distressingly red and moist smack dab in the middle of it.

“Don't worry, s'not the good stuff,” assured Junkrat, entirely misreading Hana's look of horror. “Snagged one of those mangy flea-bag birds that're always about the place.”

Poor gull. “Aren't you supposed to use, like... cheese, to catch rats? Or something?”

“What? Cheese? Why the fuck would you use cheese?” Junkrat gave his head a helpless shake. “Don't you worry, just leave this to us _professionals_. We'll have the fuckers caught and cookin' before they know what hit 'em.”

“What's this about rats?”

Hana looked up gratefully to see Fareeha sidling into the room. However, since Hana was still standing rooted in front of the door, one tentative footstep away from steel-tipped agony, Fareeha had to slide along the wall to get past her, and didn't so much as notice Junkrat's latest scheme. Unconcerned by what was unfolding, Fareeha dropped onto one of the room's armchairs and picked up a book she had left there.

“Junkrat's hunting for rats,” Hana explained, trying to figure out how best to warn everyone that they had better be watching their steps for the next few days.

“Oh? Well they just arrived, they've bee sent off to Angie's room,” said Fareeha without looking up.

Junkrat's head whipped up. “ _What_? They're in _the doc's_ room?”

With a motion that seemed too smooth and coordinated for someone as twitchy and gangly as him, Junkrat bounded back behind the couch, and sprang out a moment later with a long, clattering string of unset traps.

“Does she have her gun?” he demanded as he raced for the door. “She won't, she _never_ has her damn gun, what's she gonna do? Beat 'em with that healing stick of hers? Hooley dooley...” And then he was off clanking down the hall.

Now Fareeha was leaning over the back of the chair, staring at where Junkrat had just been. “What was that all about?” Her gaze landed on the set trap at Hana's feet. “And _what_ is _that_?”

Hana rubbed the bridge of her nose and stepped back, to go look for some sort of stick she could use to set it off. “I have no idea,” she said sincerely.

-

“You don't think it's a even a little ironic, you know, with you being a doctor and all?” Lucio was saying as Angela arranged a dish filled with fresh water next to another stacked full of dry food. “I mean, they did wipe out, like, half of Europe with a plague.”

Angela scoffed gently. “It was the fleas that did that. And in any case, those were wild rats. You wouldn't want a wild dog to bite you either, would you? Don't worry, domesticated rats don't carry disease, and in any case I had them taken to the vet before being sent for.”

Lucio laughed. “No worries, with you, these have got to be the healthiest rats in the world.”

A loud, frantic thumping – which might generously be considered knocking – came from the door. Angela just sighed – this was a common enough greeting for the team's only practicing medical professional. Ana, Zenyatta, and indeed Lucio may all make good field medics when some on the spot treatment was required, but none of them would know how to stitch a wound or deal with a crabby Jack Morrison down with the sniffles. As if sensing this risk, Lucio stood. “Well, sounds like you've got a visitor. I should be rolling anyways, still gotta talk to Torb about getting my skates back up and running.”

“I'll see you later, Lucio.”

Opening the door, Lucio nearly bumped headfirst into Junkrat's looming ribs.

“She in there?” he demanded.

“Uh, yeah,” said Lucio, slipping under Junkrat's arm and around the Junker. “You feeling okay?”

Junkrat wasn't listening though; he had bounded into the room the second Lucio was out of the way. Lucio just shrugged and carried on down the hall – Junkrat would hardly be the first person that needed to rush to see Mercy in a hurry, and if anyone was susceptible to unforeseen disasters resulting in medical attention, it was Junkrat. He could always pry for more information later.

From inside the room, Angela was nearly bowled over when Junkrat raced in.

“Jamison! Are you alright?”

“They get you?” he demanded.

Angela watched him a little warily. He was currently _very_ well armed – which was, admittedly, a standard state for Junkrat, but as of late he seemed to have been warming up to all of them. At least, he moved around the base now with considerably less firepower than when he had first arrived, which Angela chose to interpret as a sign of affection on his part. This was not, at the moment, any longer the case. Though the RIP-tire was gone, along his back hung two strings of his homemade leghold traps, and he had frag launcher tightly in hand.

“Did... what get me?” she asked carefully.

“The rats! Rocket girl said they were down this way!”

“Oh. Well then, yes, I suppose. They 'got _to_ me', if that's what you mean. They were just delivered this morning, Fareeha helped me set up the cage.

Junkrat nodded. Cage, right, yes, good first step, he supposed. Made sense for the doctor, she was soft, probably wanted to, what, catch 'em alive? Something humane, he guessed. It was a mistake, but he was here to fix that in any case.

“Do you want to see them?” she asked.

“I– what?”

It was Junkrat's turn to be wrong footed. Angela smiled at him, and gestured him over.

Angela's room looked pretty much the same as all the other assigned rooms on the base. There wasn't really that much room for variance in a military complex. It had the same sort of narrow, single-person cot and footlocker that all the rooms had, and a window that looked out off the cliff towards the ocean. Her room also had one of those fancy, tiered desks, with all sorts of shit stacked on it. Books and tablets and journals and the like, doctor-y things, Junkrat could only assume. In the far corner of the room though, there was something else entirely.

It was a cage. Sort of. More like a really big bird cage than something that you could actually use to catch anything in. It was tall, rising high above the square table it was set on, with several different platforms arranged inside it making it look like some tiny mountain-climber's dream. It had steps and ladders, dangling ropes and what looked like tiny hammocks and fabric caves. There were twisting tubes and gnawed on strings of wooden blocks and little bowls of pellets and fruit and water. Junkrat leaned closer to look, baffled, until his nose was nearly touching the bars. Then a tiny head popped out of one of the hanging, fabric cocoons. And another. And another.

Three sets of beady black eyes and twitching whiskers stared up at Junkrat.

“What're those?”

“They're my rats, Jamie,” said Angela, sounding amused.

“Those ain't rats,” he said. That, at least, he was certain about. He knew rats. Rat's were terrifying, evil, flesh-eating death machines, there was a reason he'd taken their name for his own. One of the... the _creatures_ in the cage had just clambered down through its maze of a home and was currently nibbling at a sliver of bright orange carrot that dwarfed its tiny hands. Those were not rats.

“I can assure you, they are,” said Angela. “Why, what do you think rats look like?”

“Well, they're about yea-big for starters,” said Junkrat gesturing to a point just shy of knee height.

Angela stared.

“And they got teeth like machetes. And if you wake up with one on you, yer probably already dead.”

Angela continued to stare. Junkrat fidgeted.

“I... think that is a very uniquely Australian subset,” she said carefully. “Mine are a more... common variety. ...I can assure, Jamison, you will not be finding rats quite that big around here; I suspect that the radiation may have played a role in the rats you're familiar with. Let me show you.”

Turning to the cage, Angela opened a door and cooed softly at the rats. Junkrat watched with quiet fascination and horror. Even if they were miniature, the thought of willing putting your fingers anywhere near a _rat_ was unthinkable. Even if they were small, half the danger of a rat was the invisible diseases that came after the bite. He knew more than one person who'd lost bits of themselves because of a wound gone bad, and festering didn't only happen with big wounds. A small bite could do you in.

One of the rats immediately scampered to her, and she picked it up, cupping it carefully in her hands like it was something delicate and precious, as its nose and paws explored her.

“Hello to you too,” she said, bumping her nose against its small one. “Did you miss me?”

The rat's response was to try to wiggle out of her hands and climb up her arm; she carefully rearranged her grip.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to Junkrat. He backed away. Not like he was scared or anything he just... wasn't stupid. “It's perfectly alright, she won't bit you. She's a good girl,” Angela assured him. Then added, just to be sure Junkrat understood the responsibility in her letting him hold her pets, “Not unless she feels threatened. Treat her kindly, and you'll be more than fine.”

Junkrat was skeptical to say the least.

Well... he supposed even if he did get bit, the doc was here and could patch him right back up. Right? Right. Nothin' to worry about. Junkrat, somewhat hesitantly, held out his hands and Angela let the rat drop into it.

Junkrat had felt rats before. You usually had to be pretty desperate to eat rat, because you never knew what sort of sicknesses they might have, but he'd done it. They were heavy, lean things, covered with bristly fur and coarse scar tissue. This did not feel like that at all. It was soft, and fat, and warm like a tiny, fuzzy hotwater bottle. He could feel it – her – breathing against his palm and her whiskers tickled as she nosed at first his flesh hand, and then the prosthetic. Even her tail, which Junkrat knew was supposed to be scaly and hard as a snake, _surely_ , seemed to be covered in a fine layer of soft hairs. How could something possibly be allowed to grow so soft? He marveled at the tiny thing.

“Hold still,” Angela told him. Junkrat stiffened – had he done something wrong, was it going to attack? But Angela was approaching him with a smile, and another rat in each hand. She put one on his shoulder and Junkrat stiffened more. And then relaxed. This new rat dug her little claws into his shoulder as she explored him, scampering across his hunched shoulders and then tugging at his ear with her little claws, but it wasn't painful – just a prickle. It was almost nice. Seeing the fascinated grin spreading across Junkrat's face, Angela coaxed Junkrat to lean down a bit more so she could put the next one on his head, at which point he couldn't hold back his laughter at the feeling of it scampering across his scalp and against his hair.

“They're _cute_ ,” he said, sounding disbelieving. “Shit like this isn't supposed to be _cute_.”

Angela couldn't help but laugh at that. “I suppose when one isn't forced to survive an irradiated wasteland, there is a little more allowance for cuteness.”

Junkrat just hummed noncommittally as he tried to coax the rat on his shoulders to climb down his arm.

Before long, Junkrat was lying across the floor of Angela's room, sprawled on his stomach while the rats scampered around, clearly excited to explore their new home. “The cage I had back home was bigger,” Angela told him as she brought out (to Junkrat's amazement) more toys for them, ones to be played with outside of the cage. “But this one should be more than adequate, and it _will_ be nice to have them around again. I've missed my girls.”

“I want one,” said Junkrat, marveling as the white-and-grey patched merle rat wrestled with him over a shoelace. “Hana said you catch 'em with cheese?”

Angela raised her hand to cover her grin. She wasn't sure Junkrat would appreciate it, but it was hard not to find the sight of someone so big and so dangerous being completely wooed by tiny bundles of fur somewhat charming.

“I am afraid that's more the sort of thing you'll find on a cartoon, rather than real life. And in any case, you would want to buy a tame rat, not catch a wild one... the wild ones around here aren't quite so... intimidating as the ones from your home, it was seem, but they still can be dangerous. Though, you must understand, rats require a _lot_ of responsibility,” she told him. “They aren't toys. They need plenty of space, companionship, feeding, cleaning, entertaining... You may want to think about it before rushing into any sort of decision.” And she could only imagine how Roadhog would feel if she was responsible for putting _more_ rats under his care. “But you are more than welcome to stop by my room and visit my girls. I'm sure they would love the excuse to get out and play.”

“Thanks, mate,” he said, mesmerized as her sweet, curly-haired rex tried to nibble at his fingers.

Angela watched him for a couple more moments, but he seemed completely enraptured by the tiny bodies scampering around him so she decided to leave him to it. This wasn't exactly what she had expected when she'd told Winston in no uncertain terms that Overwatch was no longer military and that if she was coming back she was absolutely bringing her pets. Listening to the Junker (who, just a few months ago, everyone was sure would murder them all in their beds) coo nonsense to a fat rat climbing in his pockets, was a surprisingly pleasing side effect.

Getting up, she went to settle in at her desk and open the dossiers she was in the middle of organizing. And then paused. She lingered for a moment before closing the files, and opened instead Athena's internet browser. A quick search revealed what Australian rats looked like, as well as some of the wounds they were known to inflict, and all of a sudden Junkrat's nervousness made perfect sense. She turned back to the rats on the floor. The merle and rex were playing in a set of fabric tunnels that she didn't dare leave in the cage, because of how quickly she suspected it would be chewed to bits, while the pearl was taking pains to clamber of the dangling sheets of Angela's bed, to find a vantage point. Junkrat's expression as he watched the pearl was one that was both impressed at its dexterity and well as possessing the slight air of a concerned parent just waiting for a child to fall; his hands were cupped a little ways beneath her climbing body. Not that the little rat would need it, she was strong and healthy and a bedsheet would barely pose a challenge to her.

Yes, Angela mused. It was really quite amazing, what good food and a secure home could do for the well-being of a rat.


End file.
